Eclogues #2

Eclogues consists of 15 straws I once met, no… twice met. I can hardly say that I know them, and it would be insincere, I suppose, to subvert this comment by saying that the chracters of the book came to know them through each other and through themselves. The straws and characters are one and the same, a dancing balloon that flits like light sinking in water that is rising. If we had listened, and laid our ear close to ourself, we would have heard some jarring sound of human mixture, faint and remote, only to be perceived by ourself.

These Eclogues do not, can not, leave the ground, the ground herebeing myth, dry soil that reveals a quinquncial festoon of patterns, golden averages and feints. Friendship is wing, according to Lao Tzu, the characters have no wings thus they cannot leave the ground. The memory of their friendship weighs them down and they remain outside of its invention. These Eclogues are pinioned by difference, welting under the weight of, as Emerson says, facts and surfaces, cities and persons.